1318 



MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 



No. I.— TIGER {FELIS r/G72I/S) KILLING AND EATIISG 

 ITS YOUNG. 



I have often wondered how it is that I have seldom found more than 

 two and never more than three cubs -with a tigress although on two occa- 

 sions when I have been so unfortunate as to shoot a pregnant tigress I 

 have found as many as five unborn cubs inside her. Until a short time 

 ago I accounted for this with the theory that possibly the tigress eats 

 some of her cubs soon after they are born — a habit not unknown with other 

 animals I believe. 



Recently however I have come to change my views. 



On May 20th I had joined camp with Mr. Symes who was shooting in 

 this district. A tiger, a tigress and two cubs were known to be about and 

 the previous night and in the very early morning the rather unusual roar of 

 a tiger was heard for some time. In the direction of the roars a prepared 

 kill had been taken by a tiger and later about a mile beyond this kill 

 a natural kill of a sambur by a tigress was found. We decided to beat over 

 the artificial kill first. The beat was blank the tiger having gone out of 

 the beat beforehand towards the other kill. The beaters however found 

 two dead half-grown tiger cubs in the beat which had clearly died in the 

 evening before. 



We examined these dead cubs and found that they had been killed by 

 a male tiger and both of them partially eaten at the haunch. They had 

 both been killed in the same place but one of them had been dragged some 

 hundred and fifty yards from its dead companion. It was interesting to 

 see that the cubs besides being rather severely bitten in the throat had 

 been much clawed in the arm pits, in fact sufficiently so to alone cause 

 their death. 



Local natives, who certainly ought to know something aboiit tigers, eay 

 that a male tiger will always kill cubs if he comes across them, and after 

 this interesting experience one can well believe it. In this particular case 

 the tigress had probably left her cubs early in the evening and killed the 

 sambur. While she was busy with this the tiger probably came across the 

 cubs on his way down to the water where the kill was. After disposing of 

 the cubs he must have gone for a drink and killed the bait tied up for him. 

 The roars we heard were probably those of the distressed mother and per- 

 haps it was well that she was not in the beat. 



Mr. Symes also corroborates the facts of this story. 



JAMES W. BEST, I. F. S. 

 BiLASPUR, C. P., Qth July 1912. 



[In Vol. VII. of our Journal (1H92), page 953, we published a note by Colonel 

 Scott of Palanpur, on " Tigers eating their young." — Eds. ] 



